Left must apologise on Swami Ramdev issue - Pioneer Editorial.

[Guest guest]

human and animal bones. For weeks thereafter, the Left-led chorus degenerated

into calumny and worse, all of which was geared towards a single objective: To

run the indigenous science of ayurveda and yoga down, and to proclaim its

exponents and practitioners as a bunch of ill-informed, unscientific right-wing

reactionaries. There was another subtext as well: If you want to guard your

health, steer clear of such "charlatans". Not surprisingly, there were clashes

between Left cadres and the followers of Acharya Ram Dev and the entire country

erupted in protests since the people felt the Communists had affronted their

belief in the time-honoured tradition of ayurveda. It must, therefore, have

been to the considerable chagrin and embarrassment of the Leftists that, far

from witnessing a swelling of their ranks in their

charge against the indigenous system of medicine as they might have expected,

even the Central Government that depends on their support for survival, thought

it fit to call their bluff by insisting that Acharya Ram Dev's ashram conformed

to good laboratory practices. Now, test results at the Delhi-based Sri Ram

Institute of Industrial Research as well as Uttaranchal Government recognised

institute at Hardwar have established the point beyond all contention: There is

no trace of animal or human parts in the ayurvedic medicines manufactured by the

Divya Yoga Pharmacy. This leaves no room for doubt that Ms Karat and her party

were seeking to gain propaganda points against what they perceive as their true

class enemy: The Hindu faith. Their attempt to turn India's millions to the

Left's one true secular god, Karl Marx, has thus fallen flat on its face and Ms

Karat and her comrades would do well to apologise to Acharya Ram Dev whose

reputation they had

assiduously sought to tarnish. It has, since the controversy broke out,

transpired that Ms Karat was misled by a handful of disgruntled workers at

Divya Yoga Pharmacy, Hardwar, who had been handed "pink slips". How far was it

justified on her part to indulge in character assassination of the Acharya

based on nothing but cockamamie peddled by axed employees of the pharmacy?

Indeed, the Left's infantile jibes at Acharya Ram Dev were symptomatic of

deracinated self-proclaimed intellectuals who see nothing right in their own,

living tradition and seek, instead, to graft their violent and constitutionally

unstable credo - that is itself a product of deep-rooted arrogance laced with

cynicism - into a historically stable society. Not surprisingly, the Indian

Left has never been able to spread its wings beyond two or three States. To the

vast masses across the

subcontinent-sized India, it is the Communist ideology that smacks of an

adulteration of the disagreeable kind. "Our ideal is not the spirituality

that withdraws from life but the conquest of life by the power of the spirit."

- Aurobindo.

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